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brake light not too bright

T

tkeswede

Member
I have a friend that has an 89 Ultra and the brake light light up but looks like it is only about half as bright as they should be. Has anyone had this before on their 89 ultra? Any suggestions to check for problems?
Thanks
 
Is it brighter when he uses the Front brake as opposed to the Rear? I had the same problem on my 85 and I cleaned the electrical wire connections that run along the bottom of the frame and it made it brighter. I also had to clean up the Oil pressure electrical connections too to get rid of an intermittent problem. Hope it helps - Bob
 
Thanks Bobflhtc for response!
I seem to think it was a little brighter with front brake then the rear. We cleaned the wire connection where it comes out of the side cover to go back to rear section light but didn't seem to help. He checked voltage from wires coming to rear brake light switch and from the switch and didn't indicate any difference there. We will go through all the connections with your suggestions now. He is going to pull a trailer and we want as much brightness in the rear as possible.
Thanks again!!
 
He might look at an LED array for the brake light. They are getting some of them to be very bright anymore and it is less amperage required to light.
 
This is usually caused by a bad ground, especially on an older bike. Try running a wire direct from the brake light metal case to the negative battery terminal and see if the light is bright then. Checking with a volt meter is good but you must check the voltage with the meter grounded at the light. This way you might see low voltage and then move the meter ground lead to the battery and you will see it increase. If a new ground wire does the trick you can find a way to run it out of sight near the original harness.
 
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